The Noise
by The Anonymite
Summary: Terrible title.  Kind of a... deeper look  something like that  at a particular moment between the Doctor and the Master in "The End of Time, Pt. 1".


**Disclaimer:** I do not own Doctor Who.

**a/n:** This is my first attempt at Doctor Who fiction, so... go easy on me, or something. Eheh... The dialogue is straight from "The End of Time, Pt. 1".

* * *

"But it hurts." He could hear distraction coming a mile off—it was as clear as day, clear as things forty-eight million times clearer than day, like Xtonic sunlight, or the smell of Rose's perfume—but he couldn't stop the Master talking. He had never been able to stop the Master talking. "It hurts, Doctor, the noise—the noise in my head, Doctor, onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour, onetwothreefour…" He was winding closer, hands shaking with madness, eyes glinting more than they ever had. He had reached the end of his tether—that much was apparent, and he could almost taste his fear. "Stronger than ever before. Can't you heart it?"

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head, because he could never hear it. Not even when they were children, after the Master had looked into the Untempered Schism and gotten the sound of his own heartbeat stuck in his head, when he had gone sobbing to the Doctor, begging for help, advise, _anything_, not even when he had tilted his head at him when the Doctor told him he couldn't help, that he couldn't hear it, and they had both known that the Master's sanity was dead and gone, that they would never run the slopes of his father's estate again, as carefree as children of Gallifrey ever could be.

"Listen—listen, listen, listen, listen." _I _am_ listening. I'm always listening._ "Every minute, every second, every beat of my hearts, there it is—calling to me. Please, listen." He was imploring, and enthralled, _wanting him to hear_, offering the secret of his madness to his worst enemy, his best friend, the only man against whom he had ever been equally matched.

And the Doctor had to deny him.

"I can't hear it," he had to say, looking him in the eye, feeling sorrow—so much sorrow—that he couldn't hear it, that he couldn't help him, that the one time—the _one time_—the Master came to him for help, the one time he was actually offering information without having it ripped from him as teeth, and he couldn't help him.

He let the hands reach for him, let the eyes glare, let their foreheads meet, because he wouldn't hear anything—just rushing thoughts, a maelstrom of pain and death and madness. No drumbeats, Master. No drumbeats—just your heart.

"Listen."

Except…

There it was. Right there. Four beats in succession, pounded on something flat, and very much _there_.

Years—they had spent _years_, _lifetimes_, millennia!—telling him—both of them—that the drums weren't real. They were never real, they were never audible or factual—at their most solid, they were a metaphor, a synonym, a bit of figurative language upon which to be dwelled—and yet, here they were.

Maybe he, too, had finally gone mad. Gone round the bend, lost his marbles, because God knew he was in for it. Ten lives he had lived—some shorter than others—and the wits that remained in his thick, thick, bloody _thick_ skull were due for retirement as of Canary Wharf.

_Taptaptaptap_

_Taptaptaptap_

_Taptaptaptap_

_Taptaptap—_

"Wha—"

That was as long as he listened, as long as it took for it to sink in, and he was pulling back, staring and staring, filled to the marrow with disbelief. His own heartbeats became a mirror image—an echo—of that rhythm in the Master's head.

"What." The Master was…startled? Confused. Watching and listening—a cornered animal.

"Whassit," the Doctor asked eloquently, too far into his own head to articulate what he…

"_What?_"

"I heard it." He couldn't believe it, but he said it: He had heard it. "But there's no noise," he said, shaking his head, watching the Master rise, watching him put his own two feet under him and _rise_, looking like just the beginning of victorious. Triumphant. _Validated._ "There never has been, it's just your insanity, it's the—" Okay, no, he was just trying to deny it, because if he accepted it…

If he accepted it, then that would mean there was a reason. That would mean…that there was a way to help him, because the Master…was not a man of his own making. Someone had…some_thing_ had… "—what _is_ it? What's inside your head?"

But the Master was mad. He didn't see that—he just saw an affirmation that he hadn't been mad from the beginning. He hadn't been lying when he told them that this… thing came into his head through the Untempered Schism, he hadn't been making it up, because it was _real_.

He laughed.

"It's real. It's _real_. _It's real!_"

And he was gone, using up more of his life force to run yet again, making the Doctor chase him, making him follow like he would until the day one of them died for good.

Which, unfortunately, would be later that very day.


End file.
